


from this moment to the parting grave

by babyyaga



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, F/M, Georgian Period, Historical, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28223067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyyaga/pseuds/babyyaga
Summary: reincarnation au wherein the detective was a human nate's fiancée :)
Relationships: Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell, Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a slight twitch of the curtain, an anxious peak before Alice flings them apart, pushes the windows open. She catches herself against the sill, and her eyes are wide with a genuine worry that makes his heart swell for being so cared for. “Nathaniel!” she says, quiet but harsh. “What are you -- you’ll hurt yourself!”

Not an unfounded fear, he supposes. A fall from here wouldn’t be fatal, but it certainly is to be avoided. A tree bough is not so different from a yardarm, however, so he shares little of her anxiety. “May I come in?”

“May you --?” She looks down at the distance between her window and the grass below, and her hands clench into fists. “I suppose you ought to.”

The challenge here isn’t so much getting in but getting in quietly. It’s one brave step off the branch and onto the windowsill, pushing off with his other, and landing on the other side without crashing straight into the floorboards and waking the whole house. He’s lucky, in that Alice is there to catch him, to brace her hands against his chest and cushion the landing.

He steadies himself, then covers her hands with his. “Did I scare you?”

“You did, in fact. What’s gotten into you?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what has gotten into me, either. All I know is that I was lying awake thinking of my Alice, my Alice, how I had to see my Alice or else these coming months would drive me well and truly mad. You wouldn’t begrudge me my sanity, would you, dear heart?”

She stares up at him for a moment, and then her lips twist into a smile and she shakes her head in exasperation. “I think you’re already quite far gone. If you’re staying, you might at least take off your boots.”

“Is that an invitation to stay?”

“Do you expect me to throw you back out of the window?”

“Alice, I’ll go if you ask me to. I wanted to see you and now I’ve seen you. I’ll not impress upon your further.”

“Then I do want you to stay.” She stretches onto the tips of her toes and kisses his cheek, soft, and then slips her fingers from beneath his to cross the room and lock the door, saying as she does, “Your coat, too.”

And so he does as she bids, leaving his boots in front of the window, folding his coat neatly over the foot of her bed. It strikes him, as he stands there, the intimacy of the scene into which he’s intruded. He’s stolen quiet moments with her, in dim hallways or down shaded lanes. But never so private as this, as her bedroom, with her bed-covers rumpled and thrown back, the sheets rippled and likely still warm from where she slept atop them. He’s never seen her in any state but prim and perfumed and stiff-backed, and glances over now to see her wrap a blue silk banyan over her chemise, hair loose and gathered over her shoulder.

This is what waits for him. It could be a year before he’s back in England, but this is the reward that awaits him for suffering through it: Alice, undone for him, every night.

“You’re looking quite self-satisfied,” she says, leaning against the smooth wood of the door. “What is it?”

“You. I love you.”

Alice blinks at him, and then ducks her head. He thinks he sees in the night’s deep shadows a soft smile on her face. She might be blushing. She starts across the room and stops at her bed, gathering up the covers in her arms and pulling him along with her to where a fire is burning low in the hearth. They situate themselves there, propped against the adjacent wall and cocooned together. “Is this the part where you suggest we elope?”

He fails to swallow a small laugh. “And what would you say if I did suggest it?”

“I’d say you really are deranged. And, as I am apparently no better than you, I would inform you that I have a dear uncle in Vienna who would happily take us in, old romantic that he is.”

“You know, the thought hadn’t at all crossed my mind. I would like to do this the right way. And, truth told, I’m keen to remain in your father’s good graces.”

“’The right way’? You consider climbing the tree outside your betrothed’s window in the middle of the night to be quite respectable, then?”

“It is as I’ve said.” He shifts to lay on his side, chin propped in his hand. “I keep thinking about being away from you. How hellish it will be. If I can shorten our separation by even a few hours...” He stops as Alice reclines beside him, as she takes the hand slung over his hip and laces her fingers between his. “I would go straight from your arms to the dockyard, if you would allow it. And straight from the dockyard back into them.”

“I’ll come to the docks and watch your ship come in, if you ask me to. I’ll battle my way to the front of the crowd to be the first face you see.”

“My angelic girl, down among the rabble? I think not.” He leans forward and presses a kiss to her temple, and then rests his forehead against the top of her head. “Besides, ships take so long to reach port. What will I do if you grow bored waiting and leave with some other handsome sailor?”

“Never!” She pulls back a few inches to look him in the eye and quite declares it, though her certainty is half in jest, as though she can hardly believe she has to say it. “Nathaniel, my love, I haven’t truly seen another man since I met you. My friends introduce me to all sorts at parties and I speak to them, thinking, ‘Oh, perhaps he’s handsome, but not so much as my Nathaniel. Bright, yes, but not a spark compared to my sun.’ I tell you that there is no man for me but you. No one.”

He laughs again. “I lament that I ever doubted your constancy, Alice, even in jest.”

“As you should.” She relaxes again, curling close to him, resting her cheek against his chest. “Then you’ll come here as soon as you set foot on solid ground again. Straight here. I’ll have waiting for you everything you’ve gone without. Cakes and fresh fruit and -- oh, I don’t know. Veal! Lamb! What would you like?”

“I imagine all I will want is you.”

“Perhaps wait until you’re six months at sea. Your answer will change, I’m sure.”

“I shall be well and truly starved of you by then.”

Alice laughs, though it is less her usual bright giggle and more something coming from her chest. She shifts, and he tenses in surprise when her lips find the skin just behind his jaw, just above the fabric of his shirt collar. She traces a few kisses along his jaw, then falls back on her elbow again and sighs.

“You should get some rest. I know little about sailing but I imagine you’ve got quite a harrowing day ahead of you.”

It is no small part of him that wants to continue as they are, kissing and petting and perhaps doing more, if she’d like. But enough of him is sensible that he contents himself with the luxury of sleeping beside her. So he undresses, just a bit further, to the point of comfort. He relishes, quietly, the way she stares, the feeling of her hand on his chest when they settle in, separated now only by the thinnest layer of fabric such that he can feel the heat of her seeping through.

He falls asleep gazing down at her, at her profile just visible beneath the covers she’s pulled up around her neck, at her delicate fingers curled against his chest, the warmth and steady rhythm of her breathing against his side.

And he wakes to her hovering over him, hand on his cheek. The sun has not yet risen though the fire has all but gone out. A finger curls in a stray lock of hair beside his temple and she says, face pinched in sadness, “I think it’s nearly time to go.”

And it is. He can tell by the dull gray sky beyond her open window that it is nearly dawn, and so he needs to be on his way. He dresses in silence, and Alice sits at the foot of her bead, head resting against the post, watching him without the same giddy interest she’d had a few hours earlier.

They sneak out together, careful steps bare of shoes taken along the floorboards closest to the wall. Alice takes his hand when they reach the front door, and she holds the back of it to her cheek for a moment. “I ought to have... gotten a miniature done or something of the sort. I suppose I simply never thought this day would actually come.”

“I’ll not forget you, dear heart. Not a single detail. What need would I have of a miniature, when I’ll have my Alice, body and soul, in a single short year?”

“It isn’t that. I loathe the idea of you being so far from me, so out of my reach, where I’m powerless to comfort or reassure you. I cannot even write to you.” She produces a handkerchief, clean white and neatly folded, and offers it to him. Folded in its crease is a delicate silver band he well recognizes -- the betrothal band he gifted her, N.H.S. and A.M.C. and 1721 inscribed on the inside. “I’d like you to hold onto it, if you would. I don’t know if it would be any comfort, but --”

“It will.” He steps closer to her, twists their hands so that he holds hers, and he places a soft kiss on her palm. “I will treasure it.”

“So you might think of me, and know that I am waiting here for you. I shall think of you every day, each and every. My prayers will begin and end with you.” The smile she graces him with is not so beaming as usual, but not so weak as he might have expected.

“Go, now, and be safe, my love. Please,” she says. “Be safe and come back to me.”


	2. Chapter 2

“This is a bad idea.” Adam du Mortain has a way about him that seems to part crowds, a glowering aura that makes him with people as oil is to water. Nathaniel watches a stream of pedestrians give the two of them a wide berth, instinctively.

“Perhaps,” Nathaniel says. “You wouldn’t be so sure if you knew her. You would understand.”

“Every -- Every _person like us_ has humans they leave behind. They all think it will be a comfort to see them again. It never is.”

Nathaniel pauses, half-way up the walk, and his hand balls into a fist at his side. But this is for Alice. It is to ease her heart. He doesn’t know what she believes, what she has been told -- what if she believes he’s left her? Run off with someone else?

But is it for her, then? Or is it for him, to ease his conscience by salvaging her memory of him?

Adam stops beside him and exhales. “Would you like me to come inside with you, or do you anticipate this meeting being too private?”

“No, no. You’re my friend, Adam. And -- I would appreciate your being there.” He opens his mouth to speak again, to explain, but can’t produce the words. He can never say it. _Vampire,_ that is. The word sticks in his throat. The first thing this Agency taught him was self-control. To stare starvation down and swallow it. It’s harder to do under stress or intense emotions. Instincts try to take over. But Adam is older than him, stronger -- a safeguard, should the worst happen. He truly, in the most desperate sense of the phrase, would not be able to live with himself if he hurt her.

It seems to happen in a rush, the blink of an eye, that he knocks, that he hears the butler announce him in some room within the house, hears a voice he knows is Alice’s give a yelped, “What?”, and then he is ushered inside a house that is so familiar to him and yet feels suddenly foreign. He can hear the timbers creaking, can hear the cook he’s never met preparing supper somewhere deep in the house, can smell the dust and sweat and perfume and over all of it something intoxicating. Things that had always been there, surely, and he simply had never been able to notice.

And if the minutes leading up to it had passed in half a second, the moment he meets Alice’s eye again lasts a year. She’s changed very little -- her dress is one he’s never seen before, her hair done up in a different style than he’s used to. But the wide, innocent eyes that gaze at him with simultaneous apprehension and adoration -- those are eyes he knows well. And the lips that form his name, softly, near pleading -- those he knows well, too.

The moment pops like a soap bubble and the two of them rush to meet one another in the middle of the room. He picks her up around the middle and the momentum carries them in a circle. And it’s like before. She’s just how he remembers her, but somehow more. Something in him has been empty, disconnected, and it’s suddenly not only full but overflowing.

And he kisses her, squarely, in a way he wished he’d done two years ago before he left. Her hands link around his neck, fingers brush his bare skin, and it’s blissful for a moment. Euphoric.

For a moment.

It’s the smell. The one he’d noticed in the hall. Alice, his Alice, is its source. This close to her, it is almost dizzying. Stomach-churning. Wonderful. Terrifying. When he kisses her, it’s as if he can almost taste it. And he wants so badly to taste it.

Alice pulls back from him, hands reaching up to cup both his cheeks. “Where have you been?” she whispers. Eyes watery, voice thick with tears.

He’d always been a bit taller than her, but now he towers over her, and so he gently takes her hands in his and guides her into the nearest chair, then kneels beside her.

“I -- I’m sorry, my love. There was a... disaster --”

“I know. The ship -- they said you were dead.”

He’d considered that. Considered and dismissed. The insurmountable barrier to convincing himself to go see her, that he would offer no closure, only reopen a wound that had surely already begun to close. “Oh, Alice,” he says, “Don’t cry, please. I couldn’t endure it.”

She pulls him back to her, back into a close embrace. And he can feel her heart beating against his chest, can feel it through the many layers of fabric he wears. He’d never had to think before, think about how very alive she is.

“Why should I cry when you’re here again, solid and real and safe in my arms? My love -- oh, God.”

It creeps over him slowly. Lulled by the soft pressure of her embrace, and the steadiness of her breathing, and that smell -- like everything good in the world but nothing concrete, like how he imagines mythical ambrosia smells. He could drown in it and be content to die there, wrapped up in this woman he loves. Had she always been like this? Had he simply never noticed? He’s been around humans plenty, but none like Alice. None so... decadent.

With his head on her shoulder, it would be so easy to kiss her neck. To catch again that faint taste that lingers on her skin. He could. She would enjoy it. She would fluster at Adam being in the room and swat at him and flush so prettily.

It is then that a savage hunger knocks at the back of his throat, one that had been lingering there since he was turned, that had awoken when he stepped in the door, and that he had ignored as he has been trained to do. It whispers to him that he could bite, too. He could bite and she would let him. She would enjoy it -- he could make sure of it. She would thread her hands through his hair and moan. And would any of it drip, perhaps? Would he have cause to trace his tongue across her clavicle or the tops of her breasts?

Hadn’t he dreamed of something like this for months on that ship? Holding her close and kissing her, hearing her whimper his name, tasting her? And here she was. Here they were, reunited. He could taste her.

He could bite her.

He could bite her.

God -- oh, God, he could. He jerks back from her as if slapped, scrambles back, rips himself from her arms.

How easily he could. Hurt her. Kill her, even, if he lost control of himself.

Some part of him, no small part, had believed that it could be corrected. That this -- supernatural beings and Agencies and his condition -- could be shunted off. His life had drifted off course and he could surely fix it. He could come home to Alice and fall into her arms, and she would somehow set everything to rights. Wake him from this dream.

But she can’t, can she? She can’t even know what has happened, what he is. Grief settles over him, a cold and clammy mist. Grief for the death of a future he’d clung to. A wife, a townhouse in the city, perhaps children in a few years. Something wonderful. Something human.

He is not human. This future is not his.

Alice reaches out after him, sinking to the floor beside him. “Nathaniel? What is it? Are you hurt?”

“No,” he says. “Alice -- Miss Clitherow. I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“We cannot -- I’m no longer at liberty to take a wife. I apologize for having occupied so much of your time.”

She stares at him, then past him, eyes unfocused as though she can hardly comprehend his words. It is a moment before she refocuses on him, fervent. “No. What is it? What’s happened? Are you in trouble? Nathaniel, my love, we may not have yet taken vows but I’ll not relinquish you to some trivial hardship.”

“It is nothing you can fix, and it is nothing in which I would involve you. I love you too dearly to subject you to that.”

“Yet you would subject me to the heartbreak of losing you? For the second time in as many years?”

“I’m sorry, Alice. I was selfish to come. Let me be selfless and release you. Let some other man who scarcely deserves you win your heart. I cannot hold it.”

“There is no man for me but you. You do not -- Nathaniel, you cannot mean this.” She reaches for his hand and clasps it between both of hers, pulls it to her lips and kisses his fingers. “Whatever you believe must keep us apart --”

“I will not be swayed on this, Alice. I love you, and I apologize, but I must go.”

Nate leans forward to place a final kiss at her temple, then extracts his hand from hers and gets to his feet. Adam stands just inside the doorway, and his look is a rare one of restrained sympathy. He gestures to the hall, Nate nods, and they leave silently.

Alice waits until she believes him out of earshot to collapse into tears. Were he a human man, he would have been. He is not, and the sound of her sobs ring in his ears.


	3. Chapter 3

Nate thought, through the years, to research what became of her. To search through old newspapers for marriage announcements, birth announcements, obituaries. To know if anyone else was ever lucky enough to be loved by her. To see if she had living descendants and where they were. To find where she is buried. Leave lilies at a grave that has been forgotten for centuries, over bones no one but him still knows the life of.

He never does. He learned his lesson, to let wounds that have healed stay closed.

He thinks of her, at times. After sex, almost always, when an empty ache sets in and he recalls how intimate it was, how known she could make him feel simply by taking his hand in hers. How crushing that hollowness feels after having known how full and buoyant he could be.

On her July birthday, most years. He has candied almonds in her honor every year. He forgets, sometimes. He’ll remember her in October and remember how long it has been since he last thought of her, and grief will pierce him like a shard of ice.

So it is not a wound that is healed, perhaps. He doubts it ever will be.

She had the loveliest red hair, but it is not a common color, so he is infrequently faced with the unpleasant sensation of seeing a woman in a crowd and wishing to a deity he no longer believes in that she would turn around and be his Alice. Its rarity means he hasn’t had the chance to grow numb to it. So though rare, it’s gutting, every time.

He experienced it on meeting Agent Rebecca Gallagher for the first time. She was older than he ever saw Alice and her face different. But in shadow or from an angle or at a distance...?

He wishes she’d had that miniature portrait done. He fears deeply that he is forgetting her face.

Until he sees her again, in a police station.

He sees red hair in profile and swallows down that pathetic jolt of longing. This is Agent Gallagher’s daughter -- he should expect some resemblance. And then Rebecca motions them to enter the office, and Detective Gallagher looks up at them, and for a moment he thinks he’s... wrong. He’s forgotten her completely, or hallucinating, or something.

And then she smiles at him in polite greeting, and he watches her tilt her head just the way Alice always did. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and it’s as though his memories are playing out in front of him. Her accent has changed, but her voice is the same soft, even tone that he can recall.

When she reaches out to shake his hand, he’s so lost in memory that for a fraction of a second, he thinks to bend and kiss it. He catches himself before he can look foolish. Introduces himself. Nate, this time, as he has been for centuries. Nathaniel belongs to Alice.

He feels it when their hands touch. Warmth in his chest where something has been cold, something that he’s carried dead for so long that he hardly remembered he was carrying it.

Perhaps it is better to have come to her now, now when he has had centuries to grow accustomed to the interminable future spread before him, when he is as he will stay.

He gravitates, that night, to one of the older books in his personal collection: a book of lackluster poetry which he bought the morning after he and Alice met. When he’d introduced himself, she’d said, “Are you of any relation to a Mister George Sewell? A poet? ‘Ah, lady mine, the rapt’rous lover cries, here by thyself I swear by those bright eyes’ and so on?”

He’d tracked down a copy of the man’s poems that very next day, believing to have found a topic of conversation that would set him apart from her other suitors -- some little known poet his lady adored, whose works he had read and could discuss. And they were certainly poems. Legible. Rhyming.

When he met her next, some weeks later, he mentioned having read this Sewell fellow, and she’d said, “Did you? And isn’t he just dreadful?”

He parses a few of the poems again, and they are no better crafted than he remembers. It’s not the poetry he wants to meditate on, but the meeting. The delight that was falling in love with her the first time.

Nate tips his head back against the arm of the sofa and lets the book fall against his thigh, and he ruminates now on the delight that will be falling in love with her again. Ruminates on how eternally lucky he is that fate brought her back to him.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is the next line of the poem quoted in chapter three. yes i am a clown. 
> 
> georgian era is extremely not my historical era so i'm going more for vibes than accuracy. do not @ me or i'll cry.


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